Re: Any Devuan-based distros that use Debian's original installer?

Fernando Negro wrote:

So that, when using the installer, instead of a novice to GNU/Linux just (unreflectively) choosing "Yes" (to quickly move on with the installation) to a mere question about if s/he wants to add a proprietary component, s/he is instead forced to read such a warning in the instructions of how to do this, and be educated (i.e. warned) about the important issue in question.

Honestly, if this comment alone had been the entire first post, I think it would have saved a lot of people a lot of headache.

Debian is already a great distribution in itself. So, there's no need to modify anything about it, in my opinion (besides removing the systemd component).

Then fork the original: bleach it, rebrand it, and share it. Setting up a personal github is easy. I'm sure someone is bound to use it.

Re: Any Devuan-based distros that use Debian's original installer?

golinux,

I'm not even going to comment on your evaluations concerning the supposed quality of my comments - because I know that such type of appreciations of other people's posts in here are not the purpose (or, according to common sense, should ever be the subject) of discussions on this forum.

So, I'll just comment on something else that I feel the need to.

Because I'm not a native English speaker, your statement (in another thread) that I "like to chew on a dry bone" was something that left me in doubt as to whether that was an insult or not - and, just a low-level form of expressing contempt, instead. And so, I first gave you the benefit of the doubt.

But, you saying now that my opinions come "from the gnat that keeps buzzing in our ears" has just cleared my doubts, as to whether your unwanted appreciations are slightly and intentionally insulting or not.

If this is the disrespectful (and, unexpectedly low-level) type of behaviour from an "Administrator" of a forum, then there's (definitely) something very wrong with the latter.

Everyone else,

Please, excuse me if I have better things to do than to come back here.

Have no concerns with using proprietary software. Enjoy the "love" from some of this forum's administrators. And, above all, pay no attention to the fact that Dyne.org receives money from the European Commission to fulfil the latter's political projects.

Re: Any Devuan-based distros that use Debian's original installer?

since this is a point about devuan that ive been aware of since 2015, im going to weigh in.

the devuan installer DOES include non-free firmware. if you think im just here to contribute fud, let me continue-- i do not think that devuan INSTALLS any non-free firmware by default.

i can point to where the person in charge of devuans installer comes right out and says that he will consider abandoning his devuan work if this is not allowed.

and while i dont agree with that decision, i can certainly understand the reason hes insisting.

in debian this policy is stricter and this all predates systemd inclusion, its nothing to do with systemd at all.

if you have debian on a server for example, the network hardware is not always supported with free firmware. so the installer includes non-free firmware for the purpose of making the network available. for some users, who have very strict policies about non-free binaries, this is an issue. its rare that someone will have a problem with this.

the kernel that comes with devuan (last i checked) is the same strict-policy kernel that debian uses-- refracta uses it, and i use it. so if you are satisfied with the policy of the debian kernel, then you should be alright with devuan too.

but if you are concerned about the non-free firmware in the installer, it is possible (to the best of my knowledge) to use refracta which uses a different installer. and it places the non-free firmware in a folder on the desktop, which you can delete and i dont believe it is automatically loaded! if you wish to remove it from the iso as well, im happy to help with that.

as the lead refracta developer is also in charge of devuan live, using devuan live as your "installer" may also help here-- id have to ask fsr about this.

as to whether im making this up (or out of date) i suspect that if i comb through the sources of the installer (id need to be pointed to where they are) i could find where the non-free firmware is included, but im no expert there.

as to where the devuan installer developer makes this claim in 2015, i believe i can find it either in irc (yes, search is broken but its being worked on?) or the mailing lists.

but really, fernando wasnt spreading fud at all. there have to be other people here that were already aware of this official devuan decision, and i am one of them.

note that proving it with the source almost certainly isnt necessary, it should be possible to confirm this just by asking actual devuan developers. if the policy is (and its very likely) still to include the network firmware, theyll say so-- its not like theyre not hiding it or this was a big secret, its just not often mentioned.

Re: Any Devuan-based distros that use Debian's original installer?

Hi All,

official Devuan installers based on d-i (debian installer) have always included non-free firmware. This is a choice made by Devuan developers. Non-free firmware packages are also available in live images (desktop-live and minimal-live), and there you have the option to remove them. This does not mean that non-free software is automatically installed or that non-free repos are automatically added to your sources.list during installation (which is something that has come up in this and other threads, and is wrong and misleading). The only case in which "non-free" is silently added to sources.list is when you install non-free firmware during installation, and it is added only to the deb entry corresponding to the install medium (CDROM or DVD). The reason is that the non-free component on the install medium contains exclusively packages for non-free firmware, which you already chose to install anyway.

Please notice that an explicit reference to the presence of non-free firmware in Devuan install media is included in the files README.txt and README.html shipped with NETINST, DVD, and CD since Devuan ASCII RC.

If you use a network mirror at install time, you are always asked if you want to include "contrib" and/or "non-free" or not [1]. If you don't use a network mirror, there is no way you can install any non-free software except for the firmware referred to above, since non-free firmware packages are the only non-free packages shipped with Devuan install media.

My personal understanding is that there is no compelling reason to change this default, since it is reasonable enough and accommodates the needs of all Devuan users.

HND

KatolaZ

[1] Please notice that the installer of Devuan ASCII Beta had a bug which included "contrib" and/or "non-free" in every line of sources.list. That was a genuine bug (http://bugs.devuan.org/190), not an intentional addition as a few contributors here have suggested. The bug was fixed in Devuan ASCII RC.

Re: Any Devuan-based distros that use Debian's original installer?

thanks for clarifying this katolaz, i did not think it installed non-free anything by default, nor that it included non-free anything in the sources.list, but its nice to have confirmation.

My personal understanding is that there is no compelling reason to change this default, since it is reasonable enough and accommodates the needs of all Devuan users.

from a technical standpoint im inclined to agree, but the needs of devuan users vary and some of us (using devuan and devuan derivs since march 2015!) have very strict policies about firmware to follow. regardless, there are relatively very few users who are affected at all, i do not expect the default to ever change-- there are other (devuan-related) solutions that should suffice. devuan live may even be one of them.

oops, i missed this before:

For the record: The live images don't have contrib and non-free in sources.list, but they do have non-free wireless firmware installed. There's a script you can run that will remove the non-free firmware.

sorry, devuan live wont do this out of the box-- but there is a script that will fix this-- do note that i am satisfied with that-- thanks again!

Re: Any Devuan-based distros that use Debian's original installer?

I started using Debian in 2000, I have used Devuan since Valentine pre-alpha (feb 2015), and I am one of those users with strict requirements about non-free firmware. Nevertheless, I think that the solution adopted by Devuan is not too bad, overall. It is not impossible to create alternative installer images for CD/DVD/NETINST which do not include non-free firmware packages, but we decided that providing both versions would be a bit too much. We are already providing 40+ different images for each release...

There is certainly room for a Devuan derivative there.

We have also planned to provide a libre Devuan repo, which might come to existence soonish. Stay tuned ;-)

Re: Any Devuan-based distros that use Debian's original installer?

We have also planned to provide a libre Devuan repo, which might come to existence soonish. Stay tuned ;-)

katolaz, thats the best news since 2015. i do note that it was mentioned earlier in the thread, so my excitement is due to it being mentioned as a likely possibility again. as for the present situation, i dont think its too bad either. room for little incremental improvements that are a big deal to a few like you and me-- all good stuff to hear. cheers.

Re: Any Devuan-based distros that use Debian's original installer?

although one of the main reasons i switched to debian from trisquel was that it had a blob-free kernel (since debian 6) and was being more responsible than ubuntu about an issue than could damage hardware, i consider it "more free than linux-libre" because it will load non-free modules.

A number of our users have expressed legitimate dissatisfaction with a consequence of the method we've used to stop the kernel from inducing users to install non-Free firmware. It is not our goal to prevent users from loading or running non-Free firmware, but the only way we thought of to avoid inducing users to run non-Free firmware had the side effect of making it impossible to use the non-Free firmware just by installing it.

not only have i talked to the linux-libre author about this, i once purchased a laptop he recommended to me based on the level of "freedom" it had.

so for me personally, the most free version of devuan would be the debian blob-free kernel, no non-free repos (contrib is non-free by extension) and no non-free firmware included.

but i believe thats what you get when you run the script in /root that removes the non-free firmware.

for most people, "libre" means "fsf will be able to add this to their list, like they did with dyne:bolic"

pure anything is a very difficult concept. but the goal of the free software movement is to make *all* software free-as-in-freedom, so that users are never "subjugated." jaromils digital/algorithmic "sovereignty" likely takes that idea one small (and very interesting) step further; while "open source" (in practice) is a step back.

Re: Any Devuan-based distros that use Debian's original installer?

A libre installer that a) installs the linux-libre kernel, b) installs only software from main, and c) puts only main in /etc/apt/sources.list would accomplish that.

IMHO linux-libre should be available in our main repo and a new libre repository would lead to confusion because main is already libre by definition.

youre correct on the technical side, but once youve done that youre so close to being eligible for this list: https://www.gnu.org/distros/free-distros.html that you might as well consider jumping through the last couple hoops to get on there-- especially when you consider that jaromil and dyne already have a (fairly dated) distro on that list, and he knows exactly what it takes to get there.

i believe many items on that list are years old without updates; trisquel and gnewsense are current-- parabola could be, pureos and guix are new and connochaetos should qualify, but the author isnt likely to bother submitting it again because they were really bad about responding to him.

Re: Any Devuan-based distros that use Debian's original installer?

I guess the intention here is not much to make Devuan "libre", rather to provide a separate libre-only repo (e.g., libre.devuan.org) for Devuan derivatives and/or for Devuan users that want to use only libre stuff. I know that "main" is effectively "libre", but in practice no Devuan derivative could ever get an official "libre" label by using the current Devuan repos, assuming that they want such a label at all.

Making a base distribution is as much working to facilitate derivatives as it is working for the base distribution itself ;-)

Re: Any Devuan-based distros that use Debian's original installer?

Thank you, KatolaZ. Very helpful information.

While on the topic, does anyone know of a list that shows which packages in Debian/Devuan's main repository a) would not pass a strict (FSF's) definition of free software or b) have a "more free" alternative available (such as linux vs. linux-libre)?

Such a list would be handy for users such as myself who wish to run Devuan (not a derivative) as a 100% free software system without any compromises.